


obsidian

by nolangerardfuck



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 00:24:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3830335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nolangerardfuck/pseuds/nolangerardfuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>short science fiction au. fernando is messed up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	obsidian

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this was originally a piece written for my english class, and i changed it up a little and am posting it here. the main char was originally a female, so let me know if i accidentally missed any female pronouns there! also the ending might be a bit confusing? it's supposed to be open to interpretation, so let me know what you think.

Fernando’s chamber door clicks shut as the clock halts at 05:00AM, indicating the start of _Blendan._ Outside the wind howls restlessly, an echoing dirge of ice. Fernando regards the sentries at his door with a prickling smile. They stare ahead with eerily glazed-over eyes, their posture rigid like crisp and masterfully carved statues. The urge to reach out and—like canaries in his grasp— _crush the breath out of them_ stings his every nerve. They would look so _stunning_ in their submission, in their obliteration, writhing on their knees in front of him. _But they are already writhing._ They stand motionless as Fernando watches them, yet he knows— _knows_ thatin their mind, they are in agony.

 

He remembers the sensation. He had been but a newborn child when _Operation Blendan_ emerged—months, perhaps years prior, his scientist father had locked himself away in his cage of calculations, waiting for a breakthrough in his experiment, when shortly after his son’s birth—suddenly, he was a scientist with a successful prototype. Did he sell it to the agents? Or did they confiscate it, giving him no choice in what was to happen? Fernando doesn’t know. Yet, it makes no difference.

 

They tested the prototype on the scientist’s own newborn son. _On Fernando_. They inserted the two microchips into each of his newborn eyes, but then aborted the project for eight years. For eight years he lived unaware, never knowing why his daddy had that guilty glint in his eyes every time he said ‘ _I love you.’_

 

At the age of eight, technicians received the legal approval they needed to activate the chips. Fernando remembers them taking his at night. He remembers 05:00AM the next morning, palms sweaty and bottom lip quivering, standing in the middle of an alien room, feeling his body stilling _—_ and the flashes beginning. They came like ocean waves swallowing him in a relentless fiery chasm. He shook and gasped, clutched at the seams of his psyche which had started to unravel around him, and screamed _daddy, daddy, please—_ and just as the waves soaked his mind, as he drowned in their depths, they would relent—but then return—again, and again. As this happened, so real he swears he remembers the feeling of blood dripping down his palms as his nails dug in—all the while, he was simply standing there— _up straight, rigid, as stunning as a senseless slave—_ and taking it in _._ Crumbling motionlessly.

He remembered, but it was years until he understood, until he realised that the waves were nothing but slews of information flowing through the microchips into his brain. Data pertaining to every subcategory of life, every hobby and occupation, every section of being that one could think of to question or query—carefully crafted each day by the state, and transmitted through radio signals to the microchips. _To his father’s microchips_. Every day at 05:00AM the transmission would start, lasting an hour, and when it was over, you would remember nothing. Clocks would stop for an hour, and then restart. _Blendan_. The perfect method of pacifying the masses, keeping them on carefully constructed puppet strings. The day it stopped, the truth revealed itself to him.

 

His father had not programmed Fernando’s microchips correctly. In theory, the data would store itself subconsciously, leaving the individual with no memory of the _Blendan_ hour, yet Fernando—he _remembers_ every day he spent in that single white room at the age of eight, at the mercy of white gloves and metallic droning. He remembers the twenty years his father kept him in his house like his puppet, under coiled chains as the world changed. As Fernando rotted in his hands, black suit figures inserted compulsory microchips into unaware newborns, children, adults and pensioners. Fernando remembers every _Blendan._ He just _never realised_.

 

Then one day, halfway through _Blendan,_ his microchips malfunctioned and never activated again. Standing in front of him by his bedroom door was his father, motionless and vacant. Searching for answers, he entered her father’s room and opened his hidden research folders—and at twenty-eight years old, he understood.

 

That day was the reason Fernando sits on his throne now. With the chains wrapped around his psyche demolished, Fernando left the citadel and fled into the barren terrain of the southern lands—territories of such volatile temperament that for eons, no one had dared tread there. Glacial winds puncture the lungs, freeze the body until the eyes and limbs cease to function—the southern lands defeat every challenger with raging torrents of ice and snow.

 

After months of navigating the tundra, living off of frozen scraps of meat as shards of ice entered his veins and encrusted his bones—he found his terminus. Circular bodies of glacial icecaps were fragmented across vast stretches of land where the solitary settlement in the southern lands was stationed. Governed for centuries by a _Rahbar,_ who himself became a slave to _Blendan,_ the south had been Fernando’s saviour. He hid in the settlement, waited until he sensed the palpable change in the masses as _Blendan_ commenced, and primed himself.

 

Entering the central stronghold had been easy. Burying a dagger into the _Rahbar_ ’s neck and disposing of the remains had been just as straightforward.

 

_Where has our leader gone? Who are you, sir?—_

_Your Rahbar has been promoted to a governmental rank up north. Tell me, has he not served you well?—_

_Of course he has, we are indebted to our leader—_

_Then if he has served his purpose well, do not scorn his reward. I have been appointed as his replacement._

An isolated population preoccupied with survival amidst a deadly arctic, they were quick to believe his empty lies. Fernando’s faux-confidence and mastery of the northern tonal differentiation in language was enough to convince them of his sincerity. There was no way of confirming the truth as it had been years since the inhabitants had direct contact with any other citadels; the title of _Rahbar_ had long since become hereditary, passing down to the first born. His father designed the signal of _Blendan_ with such strength that it would reach every corner of the land, no matter the atmospheric conditions—but it was the only signal of the like. The locals satisfied their dietary needs themselves. The _Rahbar_ dealt out necessary punishments to wrongdoers on an allocated day each month. Fernando has found that completing this duty during _Blendan_ can be rather _effective_.

Criminals sit in cells constructed below ground, barely above freezing, awaiting their judgement. The day prior, a villager appointed spokesperson shot a recording of themselves dictating the crime of each individual, with a section wherein each defend themselves. _They beg like dogs._  

 

On the opposite side of the room, the black monitor on the wall flickers to life. The reel of film flits before his eyes, and expressionless, he watches each second. The film pauses. The marble of his cathedra is cool against Fernando’s back as his fingertip rests on the _terminate_ button engineered into the armrest. The button camouflages into the white stone and obsidian surrounding it, seeming no different from the carved marble. It burns hot under Fernando’s fingertip. _Time to decide._ Taking a look at the face on screen, the corner of his mouth twitches upwards as he presses down. The picture dissolves, and soon— _so will the thief_. The picture starts up again. Next criminal in line.

 

The chains wrapped around him fell away—and then he crumbled. The memory of _every single Blendan_ echoes around him, choking him—continuously. Whispers wrap around his neck and squeeze, relenting as he is about to die, and then restarting. Until he can watch humans with fear in their eyes, and terminate them. Fernando’s reflection is in the blinding black obsidian that _dominates_ the pure white marble of his throne. Onyx and obsidian contaminate the shimmering quartz of his newborn soul. It was glittering white for a moment, a second, and then the first speck of black appeared. Poison took root and grew with the years into a wreath wrapping itself around him, and he was— _consumed—_ by tangled vines of ivy and a stench of death. It swallows him, and warps him—pale skin tinted grey, his lingering scent of saffron tinged with ash.

_And_

_so_

_it_

_goes_


End file.
